Theranos to shut down blood-testing facilities and lay off workers

October 07, 2016

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Theranos has announced it will close all clinical labs and Theranos Wellness Centers in Arizona, California and Pennsylvania and lay off approximately 340 workers. The company plans to devote its efforts instead to its miniLab platform blood-testing device, which Theranos hopes to sell to outside laboratories, according to embattled founder Elizabeth Holmes.

So continues the downward spiral of Theranos. Once a well-respected startup with VC backing from firms such as Tako Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the company has had an incredibly rough year, sparked by a Wall Street Journal story that called into question its technology and marketing claims. Theranos was valued at $9 billion as recently as last March. That number has undoubtedly plummeted since; in June, Forbes revised its estimated net worth of Holmes from $4.5 billion to nothing.